


RED

by kurgaya



Series: brilliant colours [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 19:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18372452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurgaya/pseuds/kurgaya
Summary: Kakashi casts his eyes around for the discarded med-pack and heads towards it. His knees crunch over the shattered anaesthetic. On second thought, he grabs a large shard of glass and tries to hack through the bindings. It’s not the most effective blade but the rope starts to split just as another exploding tag detonates outside - it sounds further away this time, and Kakashi jerks his head up as Obito tumbles into the cave.“Bak -holy crap.”Kakashi can’t help but roll his eyes.[Medic!Kakashi AU. A snapshot of Kannabi Bridge; something they'll remember forever].





	RED

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed warnings as I didn't even know how to start tagging this lmao
> 
>  **Warnings** : General warning for **blood, violence, and injury**. Not-very-mild **torture** (physical: kicking, strangulation, gagging, being bound) and **injury to hands** (particularly: impalement with a kunai, which is then removed).
> 
> This is set 3 years after GREEN.

 

Kakashi doesn’t care about losing his forehead-protector and shirt, but he lashes out when the Earth shinobi snatches away his med-pack. Equipment can be replaced - kunai, clothes, and tags - but that med-pack could be somebody’s _life_. Kakashi snarls around the improvised gag - the straps of his forehead-protector tied into his mouth. He can feel the cool, metal plate pressing into the back of his neck. The Earth shinobi (who Kakashi is affectionately calling _FuckYou_ in his head) laughs as he overturns the pack.

“Guess you really _are_ a med-nin.”

Rolls of bandages, gauze, heaps of ration bars, and Kakashi’s tool roll of medical-grade scalpels and surgical thread clatter across the cavern floor. FuckYou pockets the soldier pills for himself and shatters the bottles of anaesthetic at Kakashi’s feet. He turns the emergency tourniquet over in his hands a few times, apparently baffled, and then chucks it over his shoulder to the other Earth shinobi - _FuckOff_. FuckOff pays it even less mind by immediately lighting it on fire.

Kakashi kicks out. His ankles are tied together as well as his hands, but lying on his side as he is, he can still drive his feet into FuckYou’s shin. It’s a stupid thing to do for a second of satisfaction. FuckYou stamps down onto Kakashi’s ribs; sharp, lightning-hot pain explodes across his side. The gag muffles Kakashi’s cry and FuckYou swears, twisting his heel for a louder response.

“Fucking Konoha think they’re so smart,” FuckYou curses. He tosses aside the empty med-pack but Kakashi doesn’t see where it lands, a black haze of pain blurring his vision. He hears it _thwump_ against the cavern floor and wonders if, he too, is about to be made to spill all of his secrets.

FuckYou kicks Kakashi onto his back. “You kids haven’t got a _clue_. You think three brats will be enough to stop us?” He shoves his heel into Kakashi’s chest and then - eases off, his anger drawn to the kunai that Kakashi keeps hidden under his med-pack. Only, the med-pack is lying halfway across the cavern now, and FuckYou crouches down to grab the blade sticking out from under Kakashi’s back.

“The hell is -?”

He holds the three-pronged kunai up, inspecting the seal down the handle. It’s one of Minato’s thunder kunai, presented as a gift just a few days prior. Kakashi bites down hard into the gag, loath to lose something so personal to men like FuckOff and FuckYou.

“Looks important,” FuckOff says from somewhere near the mouth of the cave. He must be keeping watch for Obito and Rin, waiting to kill them, and Kakashi hopes madly that they don’t come, that they finish the mission and reconvene with Minato instead. FuckYou is right; he’s a medic. Obito has a clan and a dream far bigger than anything Kakashi could ever imagine, and Rin is a brilliant jōnin-sensei to be. She just needs a few more years and then she’ll have a team of her own; genin to protect and lead like ducklings into war. Kakashi’s death could give her those years. But if they come to rescue him, then his efforts to keep everyone alive will be for naught.

FuckYou twirls the thunder kunai around his finger. “Yeah, it does,” he muses, and in one swift motion, he yanks another kunai from his belt and slices it through the thunder kunai’s seal. He bisects the characters with a quick, deep line, and then flips the thunder kunai over so that its unusual prongs point down towards Kakashi’s chest.

A lump of fear sticks in Kakashi’s throat. The thunder kunai is useless to Minato’s space-time jutsu now, but it’s still, in the hands of an enemy, a lethal tool. FuckYou pockets his own kunai and pins Kakashi’s wrists to the ground, smiling as Kakashi struggles to break free.

“Oh please, I’m not going to kill you yet,” he says. “You Konoha shinobi care too much about your _teams_.”

Kakashi snarls - or attempts to, but his mouth freezes open in shock as FuckYou drives the thunder kunai through his hand. His chest and lungs squeeze tight; Kakashi gargles, choking on pain and a fleeting breath of air, and then his hand spasms about the blade and he _screams_. He lashes out in a panic-induced madness, kicking, his chest heaving, and gouging his feet into the dirt. FuckYou presses the pommel of the kunai, sinking it further through Kakashi’s hand and the ground. One of the smaller prongs slices through Kakashi’s other palm. He must be making a sound but he is deaf but to the pounding in his ears, blood surging through his body and spattering over Minato’s kunai. Agony _blinds_ him. Blood spills between his fingers and slops into the mud; Kakashi’s squeezes his eyes shut, refusing to pass out at FuckYou’s feet.

FuckYou wrenches the blade out. Bile burns up Kakashi’s throat. He swallows it down, gasping like a dying dog against the gag. If he could just place his palms together, there’s enough blood for hundreds of summoning jutsus. He twists his wrists against the rope, tears of pain like drops of fire behind his eyes. His hands slide against one another but never together, slick with blood. FuckYou spins the thunder kunai around and Kakashi tries to lurch away, but he’s still trapped under FuckYou’s hold.

“Two chakra signatures, a mile off,” FuckOff calls over. He must be a sensor; even Kakashi’s senses, heightened though they are, can’t pick up chakra signatures from so far away. “One of them’s a Uchiha.”

 _Obito and Rin_. Kakashi’s heart leaps into his throat - which is just as well, for FuckYou punches his chest so hard that he feels his ribcage crack.

“It’s nothing personal, kid,” FuckYou says, clamping a hand down onto Kakashi’s throat. “You Konoha shinobi are all the same. Don’t want you helping out your little team now, do we?”

He presses his weight onto Kakashi’s neck, eyes wide with malice. Kakashi wheezes, scrabbling to remove his hand. FuckYou holds firm, red-purple bruises bleeding under his touch. He could press his other hand into Kakashi’s neck as well - kill him slowly or snap his neck, strangle him like the runt of a litter doomed to die. But instead, he squeezes Kakashi’s neck tight and then slams his head into the ground - once, twice, three, four times. He steels his expression into nothingness and strikes Kakashi across the face. Blood bubbles up behind the gag. Kakashi writhes; he flexes his hands to try and escape, and the hole that the kunai left vomits blood into the mud.

FuckYou leans close, his breath like acid against the swelling, purple skin of Kakashi’s face. “We’re going to kill your friends and ruin your mission,” he says, easing the pressure from Kakashi’s neck. He replaces his hand with the thunder kunai, holding it close to Kakashi’s neck. He slices a thin line under Kakashi’s jaw, splitting open what’s left of his mask and bearing the flesh of his throat. “And then we’ll kill you.”

FuckYou pockets the thunder kunai. Kakashi curses him with all the energy he has left.

“They’re trying to sneak up on us,” FuckOff calls over, scoffing as he explains. “Konoha should’ve sent some _real_ shinobi if they wanted something done.”

“Makes it easier for us,” FuckYou agrees. He digs the heel of his shoe into Kakashi’s face. “Don’t miss us too much, ey kid? We won’t be long.”

The Earth shinobi flash through a brief series of hand-signs, gathering chakra for an unfamiliar jutsu. They’re still laughing even as they sink into the cavern walls around them, their flesh becoming rock and their voices fading into the dark. Kakashi tries to track them, but the cave swallows their chakra-signatures and they disappear.

Blood dribbles down Kakashi’s face. His ribs feel like splinters inside of his chest. He doesn’t look at his hands. If FuckYou and FuckOff are still here, then they don’t stop him as he tries to sit up onto his knees. Black spots flicker across his vision as he moves his head, but it’s hard to tell if the world wobbles when everything is dirt. Kakashi screws his eyes shut, waiting out the pain. The ringing of his ears is all that he can here; the Earth shinobi are silent, watching, and wherever Obito and Rin are, they’re either planning an assault or dead.

Kakashi bites into the gag instead of screaming. He’s the med-nin: if his team are killed, then that’s on _him_. Their lives are his responsibility - his failure.

An explosion hurls smoke and debris into the cave. An exploding tag, judging by the flames that lick the air: Konoha make. The tags from Iwa display a particular finesse in splitting open the ground. The fire outside swells with chakra, casting a red-bright light into the cave. Hope and terror rise up in Kakashi’s chest at once: Obito’s Great Fireball jutsu is unlike anything he’s ever seen in size, but it has the accuracy of a newborn puppy searching for its food. Obito could burn down the grasslands of Meadows in a single breath - by accident. The Earth shinobi certainly seem to think so too, for their yelling rises up amidst the clash of kunai and the crackle of flame.

Kakashi casts his eyes around for the discarded med-pack and heads towards it. His knees crunch over the shattered anaesthetic. On second thought, he grabs a large shard of glass (debating only for a moment whether to use his impaled or sliced hand) and tries to hack through the bindings at his ankles. It’s not the most effective blade: he’d rather has his thunder kunai, but he vows to get it back. The rope starts to split just as another exploding tag detonates outside - it sounds further away this time, and Kakashi jerks his head up as Obito tumbles into the cave.

“Bak - holy _crap_.”

Kakashi can’t help but roll his eyes. He tosses aside the glass and gestures for something better, hoping the urgency will distract Obito from saying anything dumb. Obito hurries closer and drops to his knees, slicing through the rope around Kakashi’s hands and feet. There’s an odd expression on his face, a mismatch of emotions that never settles, never decides what to display, and it’s all the more peculiar by the spinning red-black of Obito’s eyes.

Kakashi yanks out the gag, his mouth dry and throat sore. Words stick in his throat. All he can seem to do is croak, and he raises a hand to his neck, touching the bruised skin gently. A quiet Obito doesn’t bode well for anyone; and Rin fighting two Earth shinobi alone doesn’t bode well for her, either. Obito will just have to have his freak out later. Kakashi shoves past him to save what he can from the med-pack - which is little, much to his despair, and he prays that his injuries are the worst his team will receive.

He holds out his hand for a kunai. Obito’s face twists even further.

“You’re pretty beat up, Rin and I’ll handle it. Just - get to some cover, or something.”

Kakashi makes a sound of protest because it’s about all he can do.

Obito shakes his head. He holds the kunai out of immediate reach; Kakashi could just leap up and grab it, but something in Obito’s eyes suggests that he knows exactly what Kakashi wants to do. “No way, your hands are a mess! You can’t get anymore hurt.”

They’re wasting _time_. Rin is good, but she’s not _jōnin_ level good. “ _Obito_ ,” Kakashi croaks, ignoring the blood still streaming from his hands. The cut at his neck is slowly soaking his vest. He must look half-dead, beaten red, black, and blue. That’s probably why Obito is looking at him strangely; no-one in the team has ever been so injured on a mission before, least of all Kakashi. Rin is going to have a _fit_ when she sees him, but as long as she’s alive to do so, then Kakashi doesn’t care.

But what Obito comments on isn’t the state of Kakashi’s health - rapidly declining as it is.

“I don’t like you without your mask,” Obito grumbles - and now Kakashi recognises one of the emotions on his face. It’s _hate_. For a moment, just a split moment, he thinks it’s directed at him, but then Obito’s eyes swirl. “Which one of them did that? I’ll make them -”

The next explosion definitely isn’t a Konohan tag. Obito tackles him further into the cave to avoid it; rock crumbles down from the ceiling and Kakashi _oofs_ , hitting the ground hard. Obito lands on top of him, trying to shield him, which is both ridiculous _and_ useless as the ground of the cavern shakes. There must be an earth-style jutsu thrown into the explosion, and Obito swearing high and mighty is lost to the deafening sound.

And then Rin slams into them, almost throwing them all into the wall. She’s soaking wet, a common result of a failed water-style jutsu, but this doesn’t deter her. A kunai in hand and her face nearly as pale as the knuckles around it, she is equal parts ferocious and afraid. The ends of her hair is black with flame. A long scar bisects her left eye and blood cakes her face, but the hard look in her other eye suggests she struck back twice as hard.

“Get up, there’s not much time! _Get up_!”

She yanks Obito to his feet, already glancing back to the mouth of the cave for their opponents. Obito opens his mouth to comment on something - because when does he _not_? - which means Kakashi is the only one who notices the faint, yellow light of a seal burning down the back of Obito’s leg. It’s hard to make out; in the daylight outside, it would be almost impossible to see. The glow is soft but the back of the cave is dark, and every nerve in Kakashi’s body seems to snap to attention. A split-second appraisal is all he can afford. He tries to recall _anything_ from Minato’s sealing lessons, anything at all, but Rin’s better at memorising the characters and Obito is the one with the knack for layering them all together. Kakashi’s seals are hit and miss - and this time, he hopes to _hell_ it isn’t a miss as he slams a neutralising jutsu into Obito’s calf.

“What the -?”

“Shock seal,” Kakashi manages, hoping to counter-balance it with his own lightning nature. “Rin, need cover.”

Rin expels an angry breath through her nose but doesn’t argue. She rushes back to the entrance to the cave, pulling another explosive tag from her pouch. The black border reveals it’s one from Kushina. Kakashi hopes the second detonation catches the Earth shinobi off guard.

“Stop moving,” he hisses at Obito, swallowing with difficulty. His throat might not allow him to talk for much longer. He glares up at Obito to emphasise his point, who continues trying to shake him off.

“It’s fine, forget it, we should get outta here -”

“ _Shock seal_ ,” Kakashi repeats. If it activates, it’ll paralyse Obito for at least an hour. At least here, in the cave, they might have some cover, but out in the grasslands there’ll be nothing. It’ll only take a few minutes to deactivate it - but though he’s not to know at the time, it’s a few minutes they’ll never have.

“Well, can’t you deal with it _after_ we -?”

A sound far louder than the exploding tags crashes over them. Kakashi can only assume it _is_ a tag until the walls of the cave quite literally _shift_. At the mouth of the cave, Rin screams and dives out of FuckOff’s reach; Obito yells too, a choked-off call of her name, and the world plummets into earth and rubble and darkness as the roof of the cave implodes. Obito grabs Kakashi’s collar and _hurls_ him across the cave; Kakashi lands on his shoulder and rolls, and the last thing he sees is a blur of sharingan-red and the tint of Obito’s goggles in the light before the entire cave falls in.

 

 

 

Kakashi doesn’t like to remember the rest.

 

 

 

Obito's pale fingers tap Rin's cheek, smearing blood across the scar and up to the eye missing underneath. He rolls his sharingan from one teammate's look of horror to the other. It spins as red as their worlds caving out from beneath them; as the blood splattering Kakashi's hands and his vest and his hands and his _hands_ -

"Hey... Bakashi,” Obito says, crow's feet wrinkling around his eye. He's smiling - he's dying and _he's smiling_ as though this is all a big joke - but there's nothing funny about the blood around Obito's mouth. FuckOff is dead and FuckYou is _somewhere_ collecting himself, preparing to overturn the earth again, but Kakashi and Rin only have eyes for Obito. He’s been crushed and he’s _smiling_ , and his arm drops from Rin’s cheek as he croaks, “Give Rin... my eye. I don't think I'll be… needing it anymore, huh? Then at least I can still... watch over you guys.”

Rin makes a terrible sound.

Kakashi shakes his head, his vision spinning. He ignores it, and he ignores the bile rising up his throat too. “But I've never -” A corneal graft is a challenge for a team of medics and that's in an ideal setting; he's never even _dreamed_ of transplanting an entire eye. “My anaesthetic -”

“Weren’t you going to be the best?” Obito taunts, bumping Kakashi's knee with his knuckles. It's probably the closest to a punch that he can manage. “Don't tell me you… can't even do that?”

There are _so many things_ Kakashi can’t do right now. His hands are bloodied and heavy, lying like iron weights in his lap. His head swims at the sight of them, but if he looks over to Obito, he fears he’ll finally pass out.

He’s the med-nin. The _med-nin_.

“You can do it,” Rin says, her voice the smallest it’s ever been. “Where'd you need me?”

Kakashi’s team are crazy - himself included. He gestures for Rin to lie down anyway, leaving enough space slam his palm down into the earth. It barely even hurts anymore. The puff of smoke startles his teammates, and the gruesome sight of Rin and Obito, half-blind and half-crushed, and Kakashi, half beaten to death, startles the three dogs too.

“Keep watch, close perimeter,” Kakashi orders, figuring that remaining inconspicuous has gone to shit. The rockfall probably attracted more enemy attention; reinforcements will be here soon to finish the job. He has a thought to send one of the dogs with a message, but trying to reach Minato now will be suicide. No, what Kakashi needs is a safe place to operate and _time_ , both of which are laughable right now.

He turns to Shiba and Bull. Shiba has his nose pressed into Obito’s shoulder (“H-Hey boy”) and Kakashi feels a rush of guilt for summoning him. “Only engage if necessary. I'll need as much warning as you can give me. Ūhei - I need a local and a topical anesthetic. Something strong. Do we have anything?”

Shiba and Bull scatter. Kakashi’s never seen Shiba so reluctant to do _anything_.

Ūhei whines. “A general anesthetic would be stronger -”

“I know,” Kakashi snaps, and Ūhei’s ears flatten onto his head. “I don’t want a general anesthetic. What about that one from the paracress? No - get the PST. Bring all of the equipment too. Obito - I’m going to inject you with a strong anesthetic -”

“You're not making me sleep, are you?” Obito asks, sounding panicked. “Just… make me woozy. You know I sleep too long… anyway...”

Kakashi almost bites through his tongue. “No - no. It’s won’t make you sleep. It'll just relax you. You too, Rin. This stuff’s strong but it’s - I haven’t really practiced much with it. On people, I mean. It’s technically a toxin -”

“That… sounds bad,” Obito slurs. He blinks so slowly that he could be dozing. “Go ahead.”

The flippant consent almost makes Kakashi smile.

“We trust you,” Rin agrees, laying down beside Obito. She takes his hand and he smiles up at the sky, unable to see the tears on her face.

Ūhei disappears and reappears in a puff of smoke. “Here boss.”

Kakashi takes the anesthetic and equipment. There’s even a new emergency pack full of bandages, soldier pills, and a sewing kit. Something in Kakashi relaxes at the weight of a med-pack in his hands. “Thanks. Go join the perimeter. Look out for a jōnin carrying sensei’s thunder kunai.”

He starts to prep for surgery. First, he bandages his hands and slips on a pair of gloves. Then he tries not to scream. What he would _like_ is for Obito to be sleeping and pain-free right now, but he scales down the dosage as requested. Putting Obito to sleep sounds too much like killing him anyway, and Kakashi's already done that. He applies both anesthetics to Obito and Rin; Rin winces at the injection, but Obito seems not to feel a thing.

“The mission,” Obito mumbles as the anesthetic takes effect. “You can still complete the mission.”

“We will,” Rin promises, her gaze never leaving Obito. “We will, we promise.”

Kakashi getting himself kidnapped has all but _fucked_ this mission, but he doesn’t say that. Instead, he takes a deep breath, thinks of everything he’s learned, and lights his hands up from red to green.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 637 states that Minato’s flying thunder god seals can never be “removed” so something that is marked will always be marked. But can the seal be broken? Surely, if the seal is not complete, then it cannot be used? That’s what I’ve run with here.
> 
> Written for the [badthingshappenbingo](https://badthingshappenbingo.tumblr.com/). Prompt was "kidnapping".
> 
> I'm not sure what the next part of this series will be (I'm thinking either the aftermath of this with Rin & Kakashi or something with Minato, but either way, don't expect me to update this fast ever again LOL
> 
> Thanks for reading! All comments are appreciated :)


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